ADHERENCE TO HYPERTENSION GUIDELINES AMONGST GENERAL PRACTITIONERS - A CASE BASED QUESTIONARY

• DOI: 10.1097/01.hjh.0001019832.97688.42
• Publication Date: 2024-05-22T10:07:13Z
• Authors: Csaba Moczar; Roland Tóth-szeles
• Keywords: 03 medical and health sciences; 0302 clinical medicine

Objective: Hypertension is one of the most prevalent cardiovascular diseases. General practitioners have an important role in the treatment, which is why being up-to-date on treating this common disease is crucial.

Design and method: Our goal was to measure general practitioners’ adherence to national hypertension treatment guidelines. We used a case-based questionnaire to represent the real-life practice as much as possible. We reached the general practitioners of the country via a Google questionnaire. In the first part, we obtained consult and asked about sociodemographic data. After these, we presented 5 cases separately. Each case had different cardiovascular risk factors, anamnesis, physical, laboratory, and diagnostic findings with different blood pressure values. GPs had to decide whether they would treat the case with drug(s), if so, with which drug type, for what systolic and diastolic target values, and what risk factors they would consider before choosing the treatment. These were multiple-choice questions.

Results: We managed to reach out to 88 general practitioners. Most of them were familiar with the national hypertension guidelines; however, less so with the Hungarian Cardiovascular Consensus Conference recommendations. The indication of whether or not to treat a person was adequate in almost every case. The drugs to go with were coherent with the recommendations, although a tiny group started the therapy with combinations. There was also a significant number of those who chose beta-blockers as the first line of therapy. Among the target values, however, there was a considerable amount of uncertainty. The concomitant risk factors were considered when choosing the drug in most cases.

Conclusions: Although the number of participants in our study was low, there were some trends that we could withdraw from it. Most colleagues are familiar with the guidelines for hypertension treatment. Most choose correctly whether to treat a patient. There was considerable uncertainty regarding the target values for different cardiovascular-risk patients. The doctors consider most of the risk factors upon choosing the starting drug treatment. There is still a meager percentage who start with combination therapy despite its superiority to monotherapy.